The Republican Primary and Product Research

The current Republican Primary brings to memory the writings of L. L. Thurstone in his 1933 publication of "model four analysis of variance." In his example of intransitivity of data, he used the example of 10 candidates running for office where one candidate took a controversial point of view which appealed to about 20% of the population and the remaining nine took the popular stance. In this case, he pointed out that in the 10-person election, the candidate with a strong minority view would win the popular election but when pitted individually with each of the other nine, the candidate would be defeated by a wide margin.

The above is a perfect case of the difference between paired comparison results and the results of a multi-option test. (See the Views from the Hills publication of September 3, 1994, "Pair vs. Single Product testing," for a related topic.) While the Presidential election ends with a pair test, choice between two candidates (at least in most presidential elections), the market situation is seldom a choice between two alternatives. It is almost always a choice between a number of brands. As a result a loser in a pair test among many if not all of the major brand alternatives can be the market leader in the category. The best example of this phenomena is Ivory bar soap. For over 30 years, the Ivory bar was the leading seller among bar soaps, yet it could not win a pair test. It would lose by an 80/20 margin when paired against almost any of the other bar soap options.

When performing up-stream research, we should always look for ideas that appeal to a strong minority segment. My thinking is that a product of this type could be the next Tide or Pampers. Both of these brands also had trouble initially when paired with their current competition. When ideas or concepts are rated, don't just look at average acceptability scores, look at the distribution of scores. A non-normal distribution may indicate a market segmentation opportunity. (Actually if the scores are not essentially normally distributed, it is inappropriate to utilize averages.)

Pair tests are about making choices between two alternatives. The market is never about choices among two alternatives. it's about choices among many. I believe the use of pair testing to decide which alternative will do best in the market is one of the prime reasons for the rejection of many good market opportunities.

A thought for the readers Ivory bar soap no longer shares the lofty position it had ten years ago. It has also been changed. It is now more competitive with other bars in a paired comparison setting. Could this change that made it more acceptable to the masses be the reason it is no longer the leading seller? Or is it that the population has changed?